


Is It Really True?

by kiragecko



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Rumpelstilzchen | Rumpelstiltskin (Fairy Tale)
Genre: (in that it's going to be a forced marriage), (in this fic he's a lord not a king), Aromantic, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Autism, Forced Marriage, Gen, attempted king/miller's daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiragecko/pseuds/kiragecko
Summary: If the miller's daughter really is so good a spinning and dying thread, is it boasting to claim she's turning straw into gold? Daughter says yes. Father says no.
Kudos: 5





	Is It Really True?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beauty and the Beast (Tumblr Post)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/746151) by elsinore rose. 



Rumpelstiltskin: autistic miller's daughter is REALLY good at making thread. Especially linen thread. She's constantly soaking flax in the river that powers their mill. Extracting the inner fibers from the outer, straw like, boon. Hackling (combing) it. Spinning it. Dying it. Her thread is strong, her colours are bright and long lasting, and her father isn't foolishly boasting when he says she turns straw into gold. 

She's told him a hundred times to tell the literal truth, that his exaggeration will get them into trouble some day. He just jingles the coins in his purse (actual coins! Even freewomen from the cities want her thread!) and says, "isn't it true, though? I have the proof in my purse!" (It is not true. They have only seen copper and silver, never gold, coin.)

And it does get them into trouble. A lord hears the boasting as her father delivers their flour. The miller's daughter is dragged to the manor. In her fear, her words completely desert her (not that they would have been heard, anyways), and she is locked in a room to spin straw into gold. There are no stones grinding grain below her. The strange distaff feels wrong in her hands. She has been given a single night, instead of the weeks she would need, if this were actually prepared flax and not just random straw. 

She shuts down long before the strange imp shows up and takes the distaff from her hands. She certainly makes no promises, except perhaps for nodding at something she doesn't understand. All she knows is that by morning, when her father brings her the proper tools, that feel correct, the straw has become gold thread.

-

She is not allowed to return home. But a friend separates the flax that she had been drying beside the mill and her father brings it to her. She begins hackling. The comforting noise of the mill is still missing. The food is wrong and there is too much meat and no pottage. She eats only her father's bread. She still cannot find words when the strangers here speak to her. But she can make thread.

And then, they start filling her chamber with straw again. Whatever use they made of the previous gold, it must have been used up. Again she is given a single night. Again the imp shows up, and this time she watches. He is amazing. He hackles at lightning speed. The thread seems to run towards the ground as he spins it. For a while, they spin together - his golden thread, her linen. And then he is done. He drops a bag beside her as he leaves. When she opens it, it contains barberry bark and dandelions, dyer's rocket and strange yellow flowers she has never seen.

-

Still she stays at the manor. Her father brings her alum, so she can prepare her baths. The lack of vibrations from the grinding stones make the water too still. Even after finding the words to ask for simple food, the pottage does not taste right. The wood of the floor is wrong, the walls are wrong, and the view from the window is wrong. But she experiments with the flowers. It will take longer than this to perfect things, but she is able to make a slightly richer colour. She finishes her spinning, and starts soaking her thread.

She has no time to feel dread when they bring the straw again. Each bath must be the correct temperature, soaking for the correct length. The room fills, people speak to her, and she ignores it all. She begins hanging the thread to dry just before the imp arrives. He pauses a moment, before he begins his work, taking the colours in.

They are good colours. Her father has compared them to many things - egg yolks, bread, flowers, birds, and, of course, gold. They are not any of those things. Some are pale, some vibrant; some are dark, and some bright; and all are yellow linen thread that will keep their colour true for a long time. They will not satisfy the lord, but they bring a stillness inside her.

-

In the morning, the lord himself comes to see the gold. Running her hands through finished thread, twisting it into skeins, she hears him talk about marriage. She will stay in this manor for the rest of her life. He will talk to her, and touch her, and she will eat wrong food at his table. She is far too angry for words, but her hands do not shake as long as they are filled with thread.

Later, she is brought to the hall for the main meal. It is too big, and the noise and drafts frighten her. She loses time, and does not notice the imp until the people around her rise, putting hands to weapons. For the first time, she hears his words.

"... if I do not receive my promised payment, I will take back everything which I have made for you. And all other gold you possess. You have until the morning."

The lord's men step forward, but she does too.

"I have left them by your tools," she cries out. "Did you not see them?"

The court turns to her, and she struggles to find more words. But she fixes her eyes on the creature who has saved her.

"A years worth of thread, in every shade of the sun's rays." (Her father has said this, and his words flow more easily than hers.) "The colours will fade, as all human things do, but they are real and true. No glamour or enchantment is on them."

"You have forced a miller's daughter to pay your debt?" the creature scoffs. "Gold for your gambling debts and thread for the gold? What will you give to pay your debt to her?"

The lord promises a son for her to raise, a good home and food, her needs met. There is joy in her as she accepts.

-

She goes back to the mill. She makes them pottage, which they eat with good bread. When the lord's second son is old enough, he comes to the mill to help her father. He is ashamed, at first, but she teaches him of real things. Of the comforting vibration of the grinding stones beneath their feet. Of doing work well, and finding ways to love what you do. Of seeing things how they really. Of being with people who love you.

Her father says that the boy's worth more than a thousand pieces of gold and she smiles, hands full of thread. It's true.


End file.
